nll m H 20 II cA ðY\ ..n cvy "fJray for it." . . "wheat") comes from tritus, a par- ticiple of the verb terere, meaning "to . d " d h h d " h " grIn ') an t at t e wor w eat comes from !rwæte, an Old English derivative of ll'7.vit, meaning "white." In Middle English, ll'7.væte was changed to '7.vhete, thank goodness. Crossword- puzzle addicts better paste all this in their hats (or h:lvats). Very well. J'riticum vulgare was culti,rated in Mexico in the early fif- teen-hundreds by the Spanish. It can he red or white and hard or soft. In 1602 it was sown in the Elizabeth Islands, off Massachusetts; in 1611 in Virginia; by 1622 in New Netherland. The first Anlerican wheat belt ran from Delaware and Maryland to central New York; next, the Ohio Valley states were planted, with soft, red wheat. Missionaries introduced this valuable cereal into California in 1769. Canada started growing it around 1800, and in 1 2 7 raised over twenty million bushels. In 1945 we produced 1,123,143,000 bushels, about one-fifth of the total world crop. \V e used to be runner-up to Russia and probably still are, but we may be gaining on her. You can't tell, because the Soyiet governmeflt hasn't re- leased any production figures since 1940. Our '/Vinchester bushel, legal standard of measurement here, weighs 60 pounds and contains from 466,580 to 971,940 grains, or 489,919,000,000,000 to 1,020,537,000,000,000 chromosomes. 'rhe imperial bushel, England's stand- ard, weighs 61. 92 pounds, so some lay- men think that English Triticum is heavier than ours. Of course it isn't. \Vheat roots sOll1etitnes grow from four to six feet into the ground, which is an astonishing fact. 'Vheat ears usual- l}' top a stem three to five feet tall and have from eighteen to twenty-five flat- tened spikelets with half a dozen flowers apiece. Half of these flowers develop into grains; the rest are abortive. Some spikelets have long hairs, which give the wheat a bearded character, like Bernard Shaw. Shaw "\veighs a bit more than two Winchester bushels and con tains several trillion more chrolnosomes. \Vheat now f!TO\VS anywhere, from MAY 4-, 1 9 4- (, èquatorial Ecuador to the Klondike. It flourishes at sea level in Holland, at eleven thousand feet in the Himalayas, and can get along in any type of soil ex- cept dry sand and wet peat. Macaroni is made from a wheat similar to emlner. It can also be produced from a hard wheat known as durum. There is a good deal of durum south of the Great Lakes. '/Vinter wheat is sown In the fall and harvested in early SUlllmer. Spring wheat is sown in the earl} spring and harvested in late summer. Sumer is icumen in. \Vheat stalks are used in Europe and the Orient for straw hats, and here for low-grade paper and cardboard. A small amount of the grain goes into '-' '-' Postum. Everybody should cut down on bread. S1tspicious A COUPLE we are told of has been lucky enough to n10ve fronl a small, uncomfortable apartlnent to one which i$ slightly less so. In the 111idst of packing, they found they would need some cartons in which to carry kitchen utensils and things like that. 'The man of the house went down to the corner grocery and asked the proprie- tress, a hard-bitten old harridan, if he might have a few emptv cartons. She gave him a look. "Empty cartons of what?" she demanded. All-Round Man C HARLES 'TRENET, the French sing- er, flew to thIs country in time to pay the required ritual ,risits to the Enl- pire State Building and Coney Island, " M k M . l\/T . f " d H Z . see 1 a e Ine ...vl.USIC. an Ieg- feld Follies," listen to Louis ..;-\rmstrong at the i\.quarium Restaurant, eat a cou- ple of meals, sleep a couple of hours, and run through two highl} confused re- hearsals before opening at the Enlbassy Club last 'Thursday evening. '\T e caught the second of these rehearsals on Th urs- day afternoon, working our way into the Club past the kitchen help, elec- tricians carrying ten-foot ladders, and an elderly Vermont lady from \\T estern Union, who inquired at interyals, "Won't somehody please sign this tele- gram for Mr . Tenant? " Though Trenet's manager was pacing up and down the dance floor in a Gallic tizzy as we came in, his press agent, an ...-\nler- ican gentleman with the look of eagles in his eyes, was suitably composed. "He'll be a smash," he told us. "He was a smash at the E toile in Paris. His records were a smash here before the war with the cognoscenti." "With the what?"